Transform patient experience with intelligent hyper-personalization​

Patient expectations have evolved

There is a widespread acknowledgement that the pharma industry exists primarily for patients and to improve their health outcomes. However, the patient is often the least understood of pharma's stakeholders. To date, most pharma capabilities, processes, and investments are geared towards the HCP on the commercial side, resulting in the experience of the patient not being a focus.

So, perhaps it should not be a surprise that patients' experiences do not meet their expectations. Using their CXQ® framework which measures the performance of your key customer experiences against the competition, DT Consulting(an Indegene company) measured patients' interactions with pharma firms. They found the industry to be consistently poor, with pharma as a whole receiving an overall score of 30 out of 100 (compared to a score of 77 for its HCP interactions).³ Moreover, regardless of the therapy area involved - from cardiology to neurology, and all points between, pharma does not meet patients' expectations.

Figure 1:

Base: 763 patients in Europe and the US who have interacted with pharmaceutical firms

Source: DT Consulting, The state of customer experience in pharma: patient interactions

But to continue in this way would be a major missed opportunity for the industry. Patient experience requires interactions at any touchpoint to be equal to, if not better than, the experience patients have with other products and services they use.

Why should a person's expectation be any lesser if they have to consume information or use a service from pharma? Enrolling in a support program, for example, should be accomplished with the same level of ease and quality of experience, as using services provided by a bank, a car company, or an e-commerce firm. It is industries like these that are setting the digital standards in CX against which all other sectors including pharma and healthcare will be judged.

While it is true that the level of information, motivation, and behavioral engagement required for a pharma product are very different than the myriad classes of consumer products, in CX terms that is immaterial. This is quite simply just an issue the industry has to deal with - if the experiences that pharma companies provide are inferior to those offered by other sectors then they will lose the engagement battle.

One way for a company to increase its chances of success is to break “patient experience” down to its most important components:

Patient onboarding

Program design

Product access

It's early days so far, but there is already a strong momentum in the space to improve the patient experience in light of the ongoing “consumerization” of healthcare.

Figure 2:

Base: 763 patients in Europe and the US who have interacted with pharmaceutical firms (percentage do not total 100 due to rounding)

Source: DT Consulting, The state of customer experience in pharma: patient interactions

COVID-19 has forced patient support programs to break the mold

The high level of regulatory oversight required of the industry provides one reason for the historical focus on HCPs rather than patients. Another reason can be found in the sheer numbers involved. When companies think about groups of HCPs, they are thinking in terms of hundreds or even thousands but with patients, they have to start thinking in millions or billions of people. So, a business-as-usual approach to stakeholder engagement that focuses on sales representative calls on HCPs was understandable.

Figure 3:

Base: 763 patients in Europe and the US who have interacted with pharmaceutical firms (Multiple responses were accepted)

Source: DT Consulting, The state of customer experience in pharma: patient interactions

However, the digital transformations that COVID-19 has wrought on society in general, as well as on healthcare, and pharma have confirmed that this approach has been ineffective for some time. The pandemic has accelerated a significant shift in the way people approach products, services, and information through digital means.⁵

Google is the starting point for the majority of online searches, followed by pharma websites⁶ when people want information and answers. This is true for questions about health, just as it is for queries related to banking, insurance, or automobiles. The more people interact with the services provided by tech giants like Google, the higher their expectations rise for interactions that can be frictionless.

Currently, patients' primary expectations during the interactions that they have with pharma firms are that the company will treat them as individuals by providing trustworthy, accurate, and up-to-date information, all while striving to ensure that interactions are made simple. Digital health companies are responding to this need with innovations like internet-connected thermometers. One such firm is Kinsa Health, whose smartphone-connected thermometers have millions of users, creating a network of data about spikes in people with fever in March 2020 that provided an early warning sign of COVID-19's rapid spread in the US.⁷

The global pandemic's impact on health, economics, and psychology produced a “hydra-like crisis” at a time when economically speaking, “there were not huge margins for error”, according to Silicon Valley VC firm Bond Capital, one of whose partners is the noted investor and internet analyst Mary Meeker. Bond's early look at coronavirus trends in April 2020⁸ also highlighted COVID-19's potential to combine technology with healthcare and that prediction too has come to fruition in areas like telehealth,⁹ which is no longer a nice-to-have.

The aftermath of the pandemic's first acute phase has also seen a rising need for financial assistance, with important implications for pharma companies as they plan patient support programs. The core of such programs needs to be the provision for a more consumerized experience, with technology playing a key role when it comes to patient engagement. The explosion in mHealth sector with more than 318,000 mHealth apps available in major app stores and >18% sector growth expected between 2021 and 2026¹⁰ provides a tremendous opportunity for technology-led healthcare solutions to be at the forefront of providing holistic patient support programs.

It's another area where patient programs must not be generic in what they offer. Financial assistance in multiple sclerosis is very different from financial assistance for diabetics, for example. They come with different tolerance levels for how long HCPs might wait if a patient is struggling to get onto medication because of problems paying. Service offering needs to be very specific, scalable, and also easily customizable depending on the therapeutic area involved.

Make patient-centricity a reality

Pharma companies have clearly stated their desires to be more patient-centric. Their commitment to improving patients' health outcomes, arguably the single biggest measure of patient-centricity, is taken as given. But a true patient health outcome can only be achieved through mindful patient experience and optimal CX. Consequently, although firms are approaching the goal of greater patient-centricity, they still have more to do if they are to be fully patient-centric.

This could start with questioning what is the best way to deliver outstanding patient experience throughout the entire patient journey - how can patients be helped to understand their condition, consult an HCP, and gain access to the medication and care they need? None of these stages should be seen as a one-off process. Instead, they provide opportunities for a continuous and long-term program of patient engagement (see box).

Technology has a key part to play in creating a superior patient experience. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can drive automation and raise the bar for customer engagement. For example, the use of conversational AI can take chatbots to new levels of responsiveness towards patients' needs. AI can also accelerate time to market and increase the personalization of communication to patients.¹¹ At the same time, patient reach and marketing campaign planning powered by data and analytics have much scope for improvement.

The first step is empathy